Migraine: Pain of the Body, Cry of the Spirit is a personal account of migraine healing, and a guide to accessing the "physician within." The author is a seasoned health writer who offers a unique, fresh, insider's perspective on the migraine event especially as a mystical event and as a predominantly female phenomenon. Chapters contain tools for healing, including specific meditations and affirmations for migraine prevention; practical applications and descriptions of bioenergetic therapies for coping with pain; and body-mind-soul balancing for long-term total healing.

Migraine headaches afflict 28 to 30 million Americans, most of them women. Current estimates are that 15% of the population suffer migraines, and three times as many women as men are regularly clobbered by them. Termed a vascular disease by medical practitioners, migraine is much more than a headache: It is a condition that can be debilitating, disabling, and dangerous. Many women suffer primarily during menstruation; others, men and women, get them so frequently they live in fear of losing their jobs, their marriages, and their sanity. Many migraine sufferers never venture out in public without carrying along a painkilling drug. They willingly test out all of the latest medications that the medical world offers, from Imitrex to Botox. They read anything they can to find out more--about what triggers migraine, medical treatments on the horizon, and alternative approaches, from biofeedback to herbal teas.

While this book discusses the debilitating nature of migraine and the necessity for migraine prevention, its focus is clearly providing help for the individual, and is one of the few books to explore migraine as a mystical and spirit-based phenomenon. It gives readers a roadmap to begin their own intensely personal search for freedom from the migraine prison and its accompanying mindset of fear, and teaches concrete methods of empowering the Self to access inner healing by actively restoring balance in the body's subtle energy system.

Because the author believes that pursuing spiritual direction is a key to long-range healing, readers are guided to uncover their soul's natural yearnings, step by step, through a series of exercises at the end of each chapter. Topics include daily de-stressing; creating artwork and/or a journal of body-mind-spirit; meditation techniques and guided visualizations for relief from pain; affirmations to consciously derail the body's thought-pain nerve pathways; the relative merits of non-drug, natural healing remedies; and specific techniques for undergoing the transition from "illness consciousness" to "wellness consciousness."

About the Author

Marian Frances Ordway writes nonfiction, novels, poetry, and drama. Plagued by migraines since age 17, she became determined to overcome the malady, turning away from painkillers and embracing meditation and inner healing. Ordway shares the uplifting results in this book, detailing specific tools that can lead to total mind-body-spirit wellness.